


Darkling they went under the lonely night

by Mossgreen



Category: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth - All Media Types
Genre: Ancient Rome, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Cultural Differences, Gen, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24064249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mossgreen/pseuds/Mossgreen
Summary: This was not how Esca had expected his life to turn out, at all
Comments: 19
Kudos: 31
Collections: Sutcliff Swap 2020





	Darkling they went under the lonely night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SilverInk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverInk/gifts).



> ...this did not turn out quite how I expected it to go, but I hope that it pleases the one it was written for!
> 
> I have used some dialogue directly from the book towards the end of this - if you thought something sounded familiar, that's why!

Esca sat alone in the dark small cell that had been his, waiting. The last words anyone had spoken to him still rang in his ears. Beppo wearing a sneer that twisted his face mockingly, his rough voice... " _Someone’s paid good money for you, boy. I hope you prove less of a disappointment to them than you have to me._ " 

His thoughts were not neat and ordered but flowed from one to another as water bubbled over pebbles in a stream and it was some little while before he realised that he was thinking, _I could not be more of a disappointment to anyone than I am to myself, and my kin._

He had meant to die in the arena. A secutor against a retiarius - the odds were always in the Fisher’s favour despite the outlandish trident he carried. It was not that awkward three-pronged spear where the danger lay, but in the many weighted folds of the net he carried in his other hand.

So it had proven, too. 

Esca had allowed the excitement to get to him, worming under his skin, and the crowds had faded from his mind. He had run the other down as he had run his quarry down in the hills of his own country, and the net had been forgotten until the very moment the Fisher turned with the gathered folds in his hand and cast it towards Esca, his aim true and the weights carrying the net over and around him and bringing him down to the sands. The awareness of the packed benches had come roaring back for an instant and then faded again as his eyes met those of a Roman sitting with the purple-striped magistrates. A young Roman, of about his own age, as arrogant as any Esca had seen, and yet… and yet.

The scene played itself over again in his numb memory: the dark-haired young man, standing silhouetted against the winter-white sky, knuckles bloodless as he gripped the rail in front of him. Esca had barely registered the sign for mercy that he was making, despite Esca’s own choice not to ask.

Somewhere in the ludus a door clanged open, bringing him back to the present waiting, then another door, closer, then the door of the cell. Esca blinked up as the circus-master stopped, the shadow of someone else behind him. Esca’s heart leaped for a moment, irrationally. Could it be…?

"Come on, on your feet. Stephanos has come to take you to your new owner."

He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, heart heavy as if someone had replaced it with a lump of stone. Numbly, he grabbed the pathetic bundle that held his own things (and few they were - another tunic, more threadbare even than the one he had on, another loincloth). His most precious possession lay within his tunic, warmed by his skin.

He knew the way out and paid little attention to the surroundings he was leaving as he guided the older slave out of the ludus, the heavy wooden doors closing behind him for the last time.

It would be easy, to make his break for freedom. The slave - grey-haired and with a small pointy beard like a goat’s - could not have stopped Esca, warrior-trained as he was, had he chosen to make his flight, north or even south and west, to lands and people who were far more familiar to him in their speech and dress and habits than the Romans with their clipped tongue and straight roads and stone walls.

And yet… something within Esca stopped him from doing so. A memory frozen in time, of that young Roman his own age, with the dark hair and dark eyes and arrogant cast to his head, and his thumb insisting on mercy.

His new master was one Marcus Flavius Aquila, the goaty slave told him. Esca tried it out in the privacy of his thoughts, fitting the Roman name to the Roman face in the stands above him. He had been a centurion in the Legions, Stephanos said.

The picture wavered a little in Esca’s thoughts and he nearly left then. He had been wounded, the goaty slave continued, and Esca remembered again the other hand, clinging to the rail so tightly that the knuckles were white, and hope blossomed again.

Hope… he prodded at the emotion, worrying at it as a child did a loose tooth. Why should he hope to be any man’s slave? Or rather, confined to slavery as he was, why should he hope to be the possession of any man in particular?

The journey was not a long one, through the streets of the town, laid out in the Roman grid pattern. He eyed the house they came to. Closed in on itself in the Roman inward-looking way, it had a curious tower in one corner, like the watch-towers at the transit fort, and the garden (that he did not get a close look at) seemed to have some earthwork for its fourth wall. 

Somehow, that small detail relaxed him, Stephanos took his small bundle from him, telling him where he could find it when he wanted it, and pointed him towards the atrium.

A distant part of him was grateful that he would meet his new master on his own, that nobody else would witness the new humiliation of finding who it was that he would now call ‘Master’. He, who had been son to a clan chieftain of the Brigantes!

He was not a thing to be bought and sold… and yet the Romans said it was so, and it was so, and he could do nothing to change what he was now. He walked forwards into this new captivity.

It was winter, and the daylight was fading fast. The atrium was lit with oil-lamps here and there, pushing back the darkness as if the Romans could command that, too. A brazier crackled near a solitary couch, upon which reclined a Roman. His new master.

He could not at all find it within himself to be surprised to see the same man who had commanded the crowd so easily yesterday.

The conversation between them was easy, Esca’s mouth fitting itself to Roman words without the distaste he had had for them since waking up a prisoner with a knife slicing at his ear. He could serve this master, he thought, without feeling the weight of his slavery on him like a chain.

Esca fit into the household easily enough, overall. He slept across his master’s doorway at night, wrapped against the chill in a thick striped blanket and with another between himself and the straw pallet. His duties were familiar to any who had served as shield-bearer to a tribal chieftain, as Esca had once done. The small subconscious signs that Marcus made when he needed a drink, or when his leg was paining him, were easy enough to learn and more than once Esca had begun to relieve whatever was discomfiting him before Marcus had even spoken, and grey eyes met confused brown.

Esca could not find it within himself to hate this Roman, as he hated those who had killed his kinfolk and brought him to this. He could not really hate the master’s uncle, either - not that he saw much of the old man, who spent his time in the watch-tower room that was his study, writing.

He was too conscious of his slavery around Marcus, although there was a friendship there, at least on Marcus’ side. He could not quite bring himself to resent the other, whose twisted leg meant that he could not walk far without a hand on Esca’s shoulder, or a stick to lean on when Esca was elsewhere. He never told Esca how it was that he came to be wounded, for which Esca was grateful - Marcus had been with the Legions and had come here with the Legions, which meant that his wound must have been taken in a fight with one of the tribes, who were all Esca’s kinfolk after a kind. Esca himself knew well enough what had likely happened to those people - their villages burned, their fields salted, the men and women sold to slavery.

That had been the fate of Esca’s own people and lands, after all, and he was grateful not to hear how Marcus had inflicted the like thing. Knowing it was one thing, but to hear of it… It would spoil what was growing between them both.

More than once, Esca had felt the urge to tell Marcus of his own story - despite the weight of his slavery, he could not be impervious to the tenuous friendship his master offered. Two men of a similar age, both warriors in their own way - it was only natural that there be something of a friendship there.

But the weight of his bondage bore upon Esca, and he grew conscious of his clipped ear, and so each beginning died on his lips before a word was spoken.

The introduction of Cub was the closest he could come - it had felt easy to tell Marcus of this practice of the Brigantes, when they found young wolflings still unwhelped. 

It was a good story, but Esca was still hot as he recalled the look of disdain on the Tribune’s face and it was not helped by Marcus’ sudden fit of pique. The first words, Esca belatedly realised, were spoken in a tone of admiration rather than chastisement, but it was too late to take his own back and he drew back into himself. He had hoped that he had been more than mere property to Marcus but it had surely been a vain hope. 

"Esca, what has happened?"

He made no reply, he could not. It was a stupidly foolish thing to be angry over, but he could not help it.

"Esca, I want an answer."

And there it was: the command of a master to his slave. Esca shifted and deflated, the words dragged out of him as he told of the officers who had joined the hunt from the transit camp outside the town, and one of them in particular who had brought the consciousness of Esca’s bondage back upon him with all the weight of his superiority when he looked at Esca’s ear.

"Esca! Have I ever, by word or deed, given you to believe, that I think of you as that six-month soldier evidently thinks of his slaves?"

Esca shook his head. No, he had not, not once, though Esca had never been able to forget the weight of his bondage. How could he, after all? 

But something changed that night, and Esca found himself more than ever looking for the right time to talk of the time before, of all that had been ripped away from him by the Legions. Marcus, he thought, would understand.

They had been bathing when it finally happened, almost without Esca knowing it had. Esca did not much like the Roman way of cleansing themselves, but bore his duties with oil and strigil patiently enough, before helping Marcus into the cold plunge pool, shedding his own clothes to join him. The chill of the water was refreshing and as near as he could come to his old life, the beck tumbling down the fells to run chattering into the tarn where he and his brothers bathed, its cold water bracing even in the height of summer.

A chariot came racing along the street on the other side of the bath-house wall and Esca blinked, wondering if his longing had grown so strong that it had somehow transported his father’s chariot to this Roman town.

"It is not often we hear anything but a vegetable cart in this street," Marcus said, taking his tunic from Esca’s suddenly stilled hands.

Esca shook himself, suddenly back in the present. "It is Lucius Urbanus, the contractor’s son," he said - he had seen the young man and the way he treated his horses. He added, somewhat scornfully, "It should be a vegetable cart, and drawn by an ox. He is not worthy to handle horses."

They both seemed caught somewhere that was… not here. 

"So, Esca is also a charioteer," Marcus said.

"I was my father’s charioteer, once. A long time ago," Esca replied, looking away to fasten the buckle of his belt. As if from a long distance, he realised that Marcus had not spoken Latin to him then, but his own tongue, accented but familiar. And with that recognition and the other-worldy feeling of the familiar little bath-house, Esca found himself telling Marcus all about the painful story of his tribe’s defeat, though he left out all the journey south - he had been too heart-numb to remember anything of that journey now that he looked back to it.

He remembered, as he spoke, the heat of the high sweet summers, the bees in the bracken and the cool refreshing water of the beck as he and his brothers slaked their thirst after a good day’s hunting. Samhain and Beltane and the garlands of poppies and moonflowers around the white neck of his father’s bull, the midges dancing in the air above his brothers as they lay in the cool grass on long summer evenings, the sparks shivering upwards as his father set another log in the fire on winter nights…

He could not remember, afterwards, how he came to talk about the first time he had seen the might of Rome, the Legion marching its way north, silver and scarlet, all the men’s legs working together and the sun gleaming golden off the Eagle carried at the head. Its wings were arched back, as though about to stoop on a hare in the heather, as he had seen many a time. And the mist coming creeping down from the moors, that the great snake of men marched into - straight into, never flinching even as the silent whiteness swallowed them from his sight as though they had marched from one world into the next. 

He made the sign of the horns, the sign against the Evil Eye, and shivered. "There were some… strange tales, about that Legion," he added, coming to himself again.

"I know those stories," Marcus said slowly in reply. "Esca, that was my father’s Legion."

Esca shivered again but said nothing more, even as he helped Marcus stand and guided him back to the atrium of the house.

There was a kind of truce between him and Marcus after that day - na, not a truce. A truce spoke of an agreement between enemies and whatever else they were to one another, ‘enemy’ was altogether the wrong word. An understanding, then. 

Esca never spoke of his own kin after that day; the memory was altogether too raw and painful, but he was glad that he had spoken of them, and more.. 

The third thing that made Esca remember his former life was not altogether unexpected, in its way. 

Marcus had spoken to the daughter of the house next door more than once before Esca finally met her. Somehow he had not expected to meet a British girl - Marcus had spoken of Kaeso’s daughter, or ward, or something (Esca’s Latin was that of the slave trader and gladiator barrack and had naturally not included such family-focussed words, and Marcus’ British was likewise limited - and neither Marcipor nor Sassticca were apt to gossip overmuch with Esca).

The girl with the copper hair and autumn-coloured tunic that Esca came face-to-face with when he went to fetch Cub in made him pause. Despite the Roman tunic and hairstyle, she looked as British as Esca would always feel, from her straight back to her pointed chin.

"You must be…" he began, and she smiled, a flash of white teeth that would not take much to shift from friendly to fierce.

She had been crouching to scratch behind Cub’s ears, and straightened to her full height, which must have been somewhere around Esca’s shoulder, though she seemed taller because of her bearing.

"I am Cottia - of the Iceni," she said.

"I am Esca Mac Cunoval, of the Brigantes," replied Esca, in his own tongue as she had spoken, though their accents differed.

She must have known, but she did not say so, and Esca was thankful to have been allowed that - and resentful, suddenly, that he needed any man’s permission to do anything.

"I am glad you saved the cub," she said. "Marcus told me of that."

"It is the way of my people," Esca told her, knowing that she would understand. "If the cubs are very young, they will take after the ways of the dog-pack."

Cottia, he saw, had been taken too late from her people to find any ease in trying to live the Roman ways her aunt and uncle wished her to, and he felt for her.

None of them spoke of it, but each knew that the other was much a prisoner as they were themselves - Marcus with his leg that would not carry him true, Cottia to her aunt and uncle’s whims and wishes, and Esca to circumstances and a law not his own that said he was a possession.

It was a good friendship between them all, a strong one, like a three-stranded rope, and it grew and strengthened that winter until Esca thought that none of them quite knew where it ended.

Esca had been a slave in this house a year and more when everything changed.

It was spring, the days getting longer, the new growth coming everywhere and the old master had a guest for dinner, a man he had served with when they had been young men. The Legate brought with him another, a younger man Esca recognised and wished that he did not. It was the one who had laughed as Esca had made his kill - laughed with the joy of the hunt, and more. 

Esca had come across people more than once who made him painfully conscious of his clipped ear, and Placidus was one of those. Apart from that very first moment, he did not seem to look at Esca as one man would another (as Marcus looked at him), but looked through him, or simply glanced at him as if he were an object. Marcus had never treated him so, even in the first days, and Esca was never conscious of his clipped ear around Marcus. He felt a surge of gratitude towards him, for that, and a flare of resentment that there was anything he should be grateful for.

Esca was not needed to serve at the table and withdrew to the garden, sitting on the wall and enjoying the sounds and scents and feel of the evening. 

He startled as he heard his name called, and tamped down the flare of resentment that he could not be left to enjoy the evening but must obey the will of another. But this was Marcus, of course he would go. A friend would, after all.

There was a light in Marcus’ eye that was a new thing, and Esca wondered at it, even as he began telling of an idea, a plan, for them both to go on a journey North in search of a lost Eagle.

"Will you come with me?"

There was only one answer he could make to that. "I will."

He had returned to Marcus’ room; there was a belt that needed repair and this evening would be a good time to do so, while he was not needed elsewhere. It was a simple enough job, though trickier to do in the lamplight, and it was a while before the work was done and he could set to simply shining the clasps. He had no notion how long he had sat there, turning Marcus’ plan over in his head, listing out what supplies they would need, when he heard Marcus’ step - less hesitant now, but still uneven - on the tiled floor. He set his work aside as the other came into the room.

"When do we start?"

"Probably in the morning - that is, for myself, at least."

Esca’s heart rose, and then fell, but he could say nothing as Marcus continued, "You had best first take this."

It was a slim scroll that Marcus held out to him, nothing like the long scrolls that contained the works of Virgil or Ovid or the like in Marcus’ uncle’s library.

Esca took it, puzzled, and unrolled it. The lamplight was poor enough light for reading by, and whatever was contained within was written in Marcus’ neat handwriting. Esca could read capitals but script was harder for him and he could not puzzle it out. "What is it? I can read capitals easily enough but this…"

"It is your manumission - your freedom." Marcus looked down at Esca’s hands holding the slender papyrus roll, and then back up. "I made it out earlier this evening, and Uncle Aquila and the Legate witnessed it. Esca, I ought to have given it to you long ago. I have been a completely unthinking fool, and I am sorry."

Esca blinked, and looked down at the fragile thing in his hands. Cub sat down beside him and pawed at his leg in the suddenly strange atmosphere of the small room.

"I am… free? Free to go?"

"Yes. You are - free to go."

Cub whined softly in the back of his throat, discomfited by whatever was going on.

Esca shivered suddenly, as if a chill wind had blown through. "Is it… that you are sending me away?"

_Lugh Lord of Light, please - not that, let it not be that!_

"No!" Marcus looked stricken suddenly. "Oh, no. It is for you to go. Or to stay, as you will."

Esca’s heart began beating again, and he managed a smile, though it came to his face as slowly as his smiles always did now. "Then - I stay." His eyes sought out Marcus’. "It is perhaps not only I, who thinks foolish thoughts because of the Tribune Placidus."

"I should not have asked you to come on this foolish venture when you could not refuse," Marcus said, the words coming slowly. "Nobody should ask such a thing of a slave. But… he might ask a friend?"

The last word was the most hesitant of all, as if Marcus feared what Esca might reply to that thought.

Esca tossed the scroll lightly aside, as he had tossed his father’s knife at Marcus’ feet that other day. "I have not served the Centurion because I was his slave," he said, speaking his own tongue as he never had with Marcus. "I have served Marcus, and it was not slave-service." He was surprised to find that it was true - he had not been able to forget his place in this household, but he had grown to serve Marcus as he would a wounded warrior of his own people, as a friend.

"I will be glad to start on this hunting trail," he said, and was not surprised to find that it was true. He could shake the chains of his bondage loose and leave them behind as he went with Marcus wherever this new adventure would take them.


End file.
